Eagles fall to Mount Horeb, part 1

Zach Maguire landed the first blow. As it turns out, though, it wasn’t a knockout blow. Josh Manchester took care of that. Maguire — whose buzzer-beating 3-pointer before halftime gave the Mount Horeb boys basketball team a two-point lead over visiting Sauk Prairie at the break — scored 11 straight points for the Vikings to open the second half, giving them a seven-point lead. But after the Eagles rallied to tie the game with 11 minutes, 20 seconds remaining, Manchester took over. The 6-foot-3 junior scored 10 straight points for the Vikings in a little over 2 minutes, giving them an eight-point cushion they wouldn’t relinquish in an eventual 73-60, Badger Small Conference victory over upset-minded Sauk Prairie on Monday night. The dagger was a 26-footer that showcased just how dangerous Manchester (31.4 points per game) is, as he’s capable of scoring from just across or by exploding to the basket. “I felt the momentum going our way,” Manchester said of why he chose to pull the trigger on a long 3-pointer that made it 55-48 with 8:47 left. “Those are one of those shots you practice in the driveway all the time. I’m pretty confident with that shot. “I saw he was sagging off a little too much, so I just shot it from there. It was a little more legs (than usual).” Manchester broke the 48-48 tie when he burst to the hoop from the wing for a lay-up with 9:56 to go. He followed that with an elbow jumper, the long 3-pointer and another 3 from the left wing, making it 58-48 with 8 minutes left. He finished the game with 34 points, 20 of those coming in the second half. “He’s a cheat code,” Sauk Prairie coach Sean McGann said. “There’s few players in the state who are just straight up cheat codes. They make you do things that you don’t want to do. You just tip your hat because we’re contesting everything.” Boden Breunig’s putback basket with 6:10 left put an end to the Vikings’ 10-0 run, making it 58-50. But that was as close as Sauk Prairie (6-5, 2-2 Badger Small) would get the rest of the way. The Vikings (9-0, 4-0), ranked second in the state in Division 2 according to the WisSports.net coaches poll, kept their foot on the gas for the final 6 minutes to assure there would be no drama in preserving their perfect start to the year. The final score certainly doesn’t indicate exactly how close this game was, though. Manchester scored the first 5 points of the game for the Vikings, but they struggled to gain traction nonetheless, trailing 14-5 after the first 6 minutes. They would rally to get within 23-19 on a left-corner 3 by Kam Nesheim, but once again fell behind by eight. “We didn’t practice yesterday, so I feel that had something to do with it,” Manchester said of the Monday game and what he thought contributed to the slow start. “We didn’t come out ready to go. We’ve got to be better from that standpoint.” His coach agreed. “We haven’t had a stinker yet, so I was kind of waiting for one,” Vikings’ boss Todd Nesheim said. “That was really the first time we’ve got off to a poor start, but I was pleased with the way the kids rebounded from that and found a way to take the lead.” Rebounded, indeed.  Literally. Mount Horeb had only two rebounds through the first 11 minutes of the contest before getting in gear. “It seemed like the diving was by them, the loose balls were them, the rebounds were them. We were a step slow. They were making one pass and getting open 3s,” Todd Nesheim said. “But then once we got going I thought we were pretty good after that.” After trailing 27-19 with 5:29 left in the half on a jumper by Nicholas Keyser, the Vikings rallied with a 12-2 half-ending run. Senior guard Griffin Hannah scored six of the first nine points in that run for Mount Horeb sandwiched around a 3-pointer by Manchester. But the biggest shot in the run came from Maguire, whose fadeaway triple from the left wing with 3 seconds to go gave the Vikings a 31-29 advantage at the break. “It was a huge win for us to go into halftime with a lead,” Maguire said. “We were trying to battle back as much as we could. They were giving us their best game early — they had a lot of momentum, and I think we really shut that momentum down with the lead.” Manchester felt the energy from that shot and also felt a bit of relief from the fact it effectively erased his team’s slow start to the game. “That was definitely our worst first half of the year, so that’s a positive if we can play that bad and still be up,” he said. “We knew we weren’t going to play like that again (in the second half).” And they didn’t. Maguire made sure of that. The 6-foot-1 senior’s 3-pointer from the left corner on the first possession of the half made it 34-29, and he followed that up with a 3 from the wing, a baseline jumper, and another 3 from the left corner to make it 42-35 with a little over 3 minutes gone by in the half. “I hit the last one at the end of the half and then I was feeling good coming out of halftime. I felt good tonight — even in warm-ups, I felt like I was shooting pretty good,” said Maguire, who entered averaging 7.1 points per game but finished with 17 in this one. “I’ve been not shooting as good as I’ve wanted to so I’ve been working on that in practice a lot, trying to lock it back in. I was a lot more confident tonight.” Sauk Prairie didn’t fold, though, answering with a 13-6 run fueled by a pair of 3s by Otis Andres to tie the game at 48. Andres and Keyser paced the Eagles’ upset bid, scoring 17 points apiece. “I was really proud of our effort. It didn’t’ feel like a 13 point game,” McGann said. “That first half was awesome. And at one point we were down 8 in the second half (when it was 39-31)  and we came back and tied it. “I was really happy with our fight. This just shows what we’re potentially capable of.” Indeed, Sauk Prairie made the Vikings earn this one, never really fading, so much as succumbing to Manchester’s ability to take over a game. “We just tried to make it as tough as possible on Josh. He’s an incredible player and scorer,” McGann said of the key to keeping it close. “That comes at the expense of letting the other guys be a little more open. Zach shot the crap out of it tonight. He picked them up. Credit to them because they do have other guys who can beat teams.” Despite the defeat, McGann knows there’s a lot of good to glean from this game in the hopes of jumpstarting a successful January and February. “I never want us to be content that we lost, but understanding who we were playing,” McGann said. “I’m just so proud of the fact I felt there was never a stretch where we gave up. We were right there with them. “They made shots tonight and we had stretches where we didn’t. It will be good for our guys to see on film.” Meantime, Mount Horeb is just happy to still be undefeated, having saved itself from the slow start in a make-up game from the snowstorm that hit a week before Christmas. “Give their coach credit, they had a good game plan for us,” Manchester said. “Their defense made it hard for us to get into our offense from the wing. And they did a great job (on offense). They hit tough shots.” Todd Nesheim wasn’t surprised by that, though. “We’re going to get everybody’s best shot,” he said. “Everybody wants to beat, as it stands now, the number two team in the state.” So that’s why his biggest takeaway of the night was this: “Survive.” “In the middle of the second half there it was close,” he added. “But that’s where you need the mentality — what are the little things you’re going to do to win? And I thought we did that.”   MOUNT HOREB 73, SAUK PRAIRIE 60 Sauk Prairie ...... 29 31 -- 60 Mount Horeb ... 31 42 -- 73 SAUK PRAIRIE (fgm ftm-fta pts): Braden Schaaf 4 0-0 11, Casey Brickl 4 1-2 9, Otis Andres 5 2-2 17, Nicholas Keyser 8 0-1 17, Boden Breunig 1 0-0 2, Brendan Marquardt 1 1-2 4. Totals: 23 4-7 60. MOUNT HOREB: Kam Nesheim 1 0-0 3, Josh Manchester 13 2-4 34, Chris Kiel 2 0-2 4, Zach Maguire 6 0-0 17, Griffin Hannah 6 0-0 12, Alex Chapman 1 0-0 3. Totals: 29 2-6 73.   3-pointers: Sauk Prairie 10 (Schaaf 3, Andres 5, Keyser 1, Marquardt 1), Mount Horeb 13 (Nesheim 1, Manchester 6, Maguire 5, Chapman 1). Fouls: Sauk Prairie 12, Mount Horeb 7. Fouled out: None.